Editorial: Ted Kennedy helped changed the face of America

Wednesday

Aug 26, 2009 at 12:01 AMAug 26, 2009 at 3:20 AM

Eulogizing Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life.” The same can be said for Ted Kennedy, who died of cancer Tuesday at 77. Kennedy’s long and full life provides plenty to admire, reflect on and learn from, without reverting to Camelot-style mythology.

Eulogizing Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life.” The same can be said for Ted Kennedy, who died of cancer Tuesday at 77. Kennedy’s long and full life provides plenty to admire, reflect on and learn from, without reverting to Camelot-style mythology.

There are many Ted Kennedys to celebrate. There is Kennedy at the microphone, the last of the liberal lions, a courageous and consistent champion of the dispossessed, a strong voice in the highest levels of our national conversation for nearly a half-century.

There’s Ted Kennedy the friend. Among those who knew him - including his fiercest political opponents - stories of Kennedy’s personal kindness are legion. He was born to privilege, but he was drawn to stories of personal suffering and hardship. Whether you were a Senate colleague under fire or a cabdriver with a problem, Kennedy wanted to help.

There’s Uncle Teddy, was the central character in a family story that intertwined the nation’s history. The ninth child, he was thrust into the patriarch’s role by accident and assassination. His private pain and his personal weaknesses were played out in public, but the public also saw the strength and grace with which he came to shoulder a succession of Kennedy tragedies.

As his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver was mourned just two weeks ago, we were reminded that public service has always been a Kennedy family value. Kennedy reinforced that value in public policy - the largest expansion of national service opportunities in history, signed into law last March, bears his name - and by example. Kennedy could have given up the Washington battlegrounds for his beloved Cape Cod long ago, but he kept working till his dying days to leave a better world behind.

Then there is Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whose legislative legacy reads like a history book. His maiden Senate speech was given in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Laws he authored - Title IX, which opened school sport to girls, the COBRA health insurance rules, the creation of the Martin Luther King national holiday, the 18-year-old vote, the SCHIP children’s health insurance program, several immigration reform acts - have changed the face of America. His skills as a legislative negotiator are already being sorely missed as Congress grapples with the issue he considered his life’s work: health care reform.

Kennedy was the author of some of his darkest days, and he paid for his failings, both political - an ill-advised challenge to President Jimmy Carter in 1980 - and personal - a night of bad behavior in 1969 that left a young woman dead. He redeemed himself through hard work, by making himself, in the words of Barack Obama, the man Kennedy helped make president, “the greatest senator of our times.”

Unlike his brothers, Ted Kennedy lived long enough to see his end coming. After his yearlong public illness, Kennedy’s death shouldn’t come as a shock, but it does. The world is a different place with him gone - and a better one because he lived.